


Something Junkie

by eleanor_lavish



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: M/M, PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-12
Updated: 2005-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-30 02:18:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleanor_lavish/pseuds/eleanor_lavish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick keeps waiting for something to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Junkie

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://shellies.livejournal.com/profile)[**shellies**](http://shellies.livejournal.com/) ’s Two Lines Challenge 2005. It’s late, but she says she loves me anyway. Another note for those on antidepressants/anxiety medication: meds are good, and they keep you from doing crazy things. Unless you have Dr. Gil Grissom backing you up, you should keep taking them, I think. Thanks to my beta-by-the-pool [](http://saturn92103.livejournal.com/profile)[**saturn92103**](http://saturn92103.livejournal.com/)!

  
My Two Lines Lyrics:  
 _i'm not alone because the tv's on  
i'm not crazy 'cause i take the right pills, every day  
-jimmy eat world, bleed American_

 

The bottles sat unopened on his shelf.

He filled the prescriptions every month like clockwork and placed them side-by-side in the medicine cabinet. He’d tried to take them at first. But he found that his heart couldn’t take it. Literally. His heart had been beating so slowly since they pulled him out of the ground that he sometimes stood stock-still to see if he could feel it. It was as though the world had kept going while Nick’s body had slowed to a crawl. When he took the pills, it felt like there was nothing left in his chest at all.

He couldn’t figure why he kept them. They weren’t really something to save for a rainy day. Or maybe they were and Nick was just hoping against hope that it would never get so rainy that he’d need them. But just in case…

He looked at them sometimes, looks full of longing and exhaustion and anger and fear. He told his doctors he took them, ‘Oh yes, sir. Once a day, right on schedule.’ It was the only way they let him back to work and he knew the pretense was necessary.

He was following his recovery to the letter—or as close to the post-trauma letter as they could figure. Not too many cases of being buried alive to compare him to. Everyone saw what they wanted to see and Nick could read them all so well by now. Warrick needed him to smile more, so he did. Cath needed to hug him, and he let her. Grissom was the hardest, as usual, but Nick did his job well and showed up to work on time and his hands didn’t shake even when he stood next to the glass case of cockroaches in the office. Grissom still watched him, but that was okay.

He was used to people watching him.

*

Nick loved the desert. It was one of the things that had sealed the deal when he moved from Dallas. Miles and miles of nothing, shimmering and glowing to the edge of the world. His hikes used to be a way of clearing his head from the cases he was working on. He could climb over the red rocks down to the dam and not think about dead kids and blood spatter and inhumanity. But he would think about his family and watch the birds that scavenged the trails and sing old country songs his grandfather used to love.

These days, he found that he wouldn’t think of much of anything at all. The silence and the heat would bake him and cleanse him. He would walk for hours and emerge into the parking lot where his Denali was waiting blinking and looking at his watch in confusion. He’d wandered for almost five hours once and couldn’t really remember where he’d been. Doing the laundry later, he noticed the knees of his jeans were dusty like he’d been kneeling a long time.

He wondered if praying counted if you didn’t remember it later.

*

The first time he hit 157mph in the truck, Nick felt the wheels spin out on the desert sand and barely kept the vehicle on the road. He opened his eyes to see his hands gripped tight on the steering wheel and he could hear his blood rushing alien through his veins. He hadn’t meant to go that fast; he just wasn’t paying attention. But suddenly the world was going by faster and faster and Nick pictured himself a blur on the inside, untouchable, unseen. His foot pressed the gas to the floor and the world was orange streaks in the dawn. He had a bit of trouble stopping that day but he got better.

Better and faster.

*

He found the bar by accident one night when he and Sara were investigating a crime scene in the barrio. Seedy wasn’t the right word for it. It was dank and smelled of years and years of stale beer and pain. The clientele was made up mainly of ex-cons and washed out gamblers. Sara had stiffened the second they walked in and Brass had nonchalantly taken the safety off his gun. They didn’t find the guy they were looking for but Nick found himself back there the next night after shift. He took a seat in the back corner and nursed two beers for almost three hours. He didn’t know what he was waiting for until a man with a tattoo of a skull on fire leaned his knuckles on the table and told Nick to get the fuck out of his seat.

Nick just smiled.

*

The house was dark and quiet, but Nick could feel the tension in his hands and his back as he reached for his sidearm. Brass was three steps ahead, quiet and alert, gun drawn. Nick heard it before he saw it and had the door open before Jim had even turned. The shadow was fleeing into the next room and Nick followed. He could dimly hear Jim calling after him, telling him to stop, but Nick was through the door already. His heart was beating fast enough to hurt in his chest. The suspect was halfway through a window by the time Nick caught up with him and tugged him back onto the floor. It wasn’t until Brass was there beside him, prying his fingers out of the guy’s shirt, that Nick realized he was on the floor too.

His gun lay forgotten across the room.

*

“Nick?” Grissom’s voice should have been annoyed, angry, accusing, and it was. But it was also laced with the same tender concern that had plagued Nick since that night underground.

Nick stopped in the doorway to Grissom’s office, leaning on the doorframe. “Yeah?”

Grissom took his glasses off and leaned back in his chair. “Brass tells me you took down a suspect today.”

“Yeah. Guy was trying to go out the window.”

“So you… what? Thought you’d tackle him? Brass said you were nowhere near your gun when he found you. Nick…”

“Look, he was going to get away, and now he’s not. I’m trained to do this, Grissom.” Nick could hear the frustration bubbling through, the kind he was trying harder and harder to control every day. The kind the pills were supposed to fix. He took a deep breath and continued. “I’m sorry I didn’t wait for Brass, okay?”

Grissom sighed deeply and Nick barely kept from punching the door. “Come inside and close the door, Nick.” When the door clicked shut, Grissom stood and walked to lean on the front of his desk. “It’s not just today. I’ve been keeping an eye on you lately, and you’re… you’re out of control, Nicky.”

“I didn’t ask for a babysitter, Gris.” He _was_ angry now, and all he wanted was to get to his truck and drive out to the desert and forget.

“I know that. But we’ve all been worried. You don’t talk to us anymore; you come in with bruises. Vega says he’s seen you in some seedy neighborhoods recently. And now you go after a suspect unarmed.”

“What does it matter? He didn’t kill me.”

“There’s no need to tempt fate, Nick.”

Nick’s laugh was mirthless. “Fate seems to enjoy kicking the shit out of me anyway, Grissom. Might as well have a little fun while I wait for the next shoe to drop.”

“This is what you call fun? Putting your life on the line? Getting beaten up in bars? Jesus, Nick.”

He could see Grissom’s face—drawn and pale as he rubbed at the bridge of his nose. Nick almost apologized, almost turned on the smile, and made the jokes he knew would sweep this under the rug. But he was too tired.

“What are you looking for?” Grissom’s voice was quiet, serious.

Nick crossed his arms and was shocked to feel the rapid beat of his heart though his jacket. He kept waiting for _the night_ , the one where something would happen, where something would change. He wasn’t sure what, but he’d been waiting. “I don’t know.”

“So you’re just going to do every stupid, dangerous thing you can think of until you figure it out?” A hint of weary bemusement laced Grissom’s voice and set Nick’s teeth on edge.

“Maybe, yeah. If that’s what it takes.”

“Takes to do what, Nick? You don’t even know what you’re looking for.”

It pissed him off that Grissom thought he knew what was going on in Nick’s head; that Grissom still seemed to know everything while Nick was running around until he dropped trying—and failing-- to figure out what his life was supposed to be now. After. What would make it seem worth living again.

“Fine, then. You tell me. You tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for and save me all the trouble of finding out myself.” When Grissom didn’t reply, Nick reached for the door handle. “Thought so.”

Grissom’s hand slammed down onto the door and Nick startled back a step. Grissom’s face wasn’t haggard now; it was angry and anguished. “What’s the stupidest, most dangerous thing you can think of?”

“W-what?”

“Right now, Nick. Tell me the most insanely stupid thing you can think of doing right now and we’ll do it. You and me. Jumping of a cliff, starting a fight in a bar, holding up a convenience store, you name it.” Grissom had him trapped against the wall and Nick could feel the pinprick of adrenaline in his chest. “You’ve got one more chance to try it your way, and if it doesn’t work, you stop. You go back to therapy and pills and whatever the hell else, but this _stops_. I will _not_ watch you wait to die, Nick. So you pick. One last shot. Stupidest thing you can think of…”

Nick only needed a moment to decide on his last hurrah. Either it would kill him or it wouldn’t, and if he lived through it, he could live through pretty much anything. He leaned forward and placed his mouth chastely over Grissom’s, waiting a moment before letting his tongue swipe gently over his bottom lip. His heart was beating so fast it sounded like a freight train, blood rushing past his ears like a flood.

When Grissom’s mouth opened under his, Nick felt his heart stop altogether.  



End file.
